


Winter Stories

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 13:43:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5542103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seasonal fragments - some set during and around canon, some modern AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Forward Motion (Canon)

**Author's Note:**

> This collection of six tiny ficlets was sent out to friends with my holiday cards this year in the form of a booklet. The last three belong loosely to my eternally WIP modern AU ([link](http://homsantoft.tumblr.com/post/127930399302/can-i-please-have-dorianbull-modern-au)).

In the Emprise du Lion, the Bull’s spirits lifted. Not that it wasn’t its own special kind of shitty, But the thing was – well, there _were_ dragons. That’s what he told Adaar, at least. Dragons! Three of them, wheeling and crying above the frozen mountains. Who wouldn’t go for that?

“There’s something terribly perverse about this fascination of yours,” Dorian said. 

“My love for dragons is pure and spiritual,” the Bull told him.

They exchanged a long look. Dorian raised a disdainful eyebrow. 

“Hey,” the Bull said easily. “Nothing impure about sex. Get that Tevinter crap out of here.” Laughed at Dorian’s expression.

The weather had turned milder. The ice on the river creaked. The snow stopped crunching underfoot on the paths, turned soft under the sun.

“I’m glad, I must admit, to see you in high spirits,” Dorian murmured later, smiled sidelong at him where they sat by the fire. That little bit of promise in his eyes, even though he was tired and cold. 

One day soon we’ll probably fuck, the Bull thought, and wanted it.

“You know me,” the Bull said. “I’m easy. Something to fight, a drink, and I’m good.”

“Really,” Dorian said softly, without taking the obvious bait, and didn’t need to mention the Storm Coast. They drank in silence for a time. Dorian leaned in closer.

“I like it up here,” the Bull admitted. Sighed, stretched his legs out. “Nothing like—“ Like home. But he’d stumbled on the final word.

“The North,” Dorian said quietly. “I suppose it does, after all, have that to recommend it. Nostalgia is all well and good, but on occasion—yes, I do take your point. For all this place is objectively frightful.”

A gift: Dorian’s hand, cool upon his knee, anchoring him firmly in the moment.


	2. Firstday (Canon)

In the courtyard, a bonfire burned high. Little snow within Skyhold’s walls, but the air was winter-cold, the wind biting as it swept across the battlements. 

Music and raised voices. One might dance, if one was quite lost to good sense. Sing drunken southern songs. A cup for the year past!

Dorian turned his back on the window. A little wine by his own fire, away from that accursed wind. Surely that was more the thing. I am made old and dull by my foreignness, he thought to himself. Something must be done. How best to provoke Josephine into unleashing him upon that Wintersend ball in Lydes the Orlesians spoke so highly of, then? A worthy topic of consideration, with which he might amuse himself tolerably well.

“No dancing for you, huh?” the Bull asked. Standing in the doorway, he seemed very large; one grew accustomed to his bulk, and yet, at times—

“Oh, certainly not,” Dorian said. “Not vertically, at any rate. Lamentably frozen as they are, I nonetheless value my toes far too highly to allow even the most handsome of chevaliers to step on them.”

“Horizontally, though,” the Bull said. “Got your eye on anyone?”

Dorian let his gaze linger on the Bull, let his lips quirk a little, amused appreciation. Let that stand as an answer, if the Bull chose to take it as such. And if he did not – well, then one hadn’t said a thing about it, had one? Nothing to be ashamed of.

“Oh, I _see_ ,” the Bull said. A slowly spreading grin. “Yeah, alright. I’m game. You want to come over to me?”

One should begin the new year as one meant to continue it, Dorian thought. His father’s words, damn the man, but not an unworthy point despite this disadvantage. And was this the way in which he meant to go on? Not merely two enjoyable, slightly drunken tumbles, but rather – well – an ongoing arrangement, say. And oh – oh, yes, perhaps it was.

“My room, I think you’ll find, is rather warmer,” Dorian said, and, with a sly smile, stepped towards the Bull; stepped across the threshold of the year.


	3. Life in Moments (Post-Trespasser)

On the Nevarran border, the winters were cool, misty. In Northern Tevinter winter hardly existed; in his own way, Dorian found he had grown to miss that constant shift of the seasons that the South knew. 

They were coming up now on the changing of the year. By now, the roads around Sykhold would be banked with high snowdrifts. And in the North, Dorian had crept away: left his friends and his enemies alike to the planning of elaborate parties and made a private engagement.

Frost lay over the sleeping garden. Every step left a crisp sunken impression in the brittle grass. The reservoir that collected rainwater from the roof was covered in a perfect circle of ice, but away past the side of the main house, the hot springs that fed the bathhouse steamed.

Wood from the outhouse. Servant’s work, Mae’s voice said in his head, rather despairing. His hands had grown soft, felt the rough grain of the logs all too well. What problem could one not solve with magic and money, if one was a Magister? 

In the stillness, sounds became loud. The hinges of the outhouse door screamed with disuse, the poker clattered noisily against the grate in the kitchen. Think if a bird had nested in the chimney again. But the fire drew, stirred the air, warmed the stones. The house began to awaken, mumbling like an old man. Dorian was not without sympathy for it.

This, too, was loud: hooves along the road. It set his heart racing, such anticipation, please let it be—

And then there was the Bull, large and living in the kitchen doorway, cloak heavy with condensation, hair grown out a little more, a mess of curls pulled back in a knot. A new scar on his cheek. And every part of Dorian’s awareness turned towards him, alight and wondering like one who has been too long without the sun.

“ _Dorian_ ,” the Bull said. “Hey, Kadan. Been a while.”

“It has,” Dorian said, and laughed as the Bull rushed to him, pulled him into a tight embrace. Felt, so unusually intensely, that he lived.


	4. Drift (Modern AU)

Early winter was a rapid freefall into darkness. Dorian’s favourite coat was no longer warm enough, the soles of his shoes too hard to offer much grip on the first ice. How did he make it through that last winter? He could hardly remember. A haze of desperate tiredness, a half dozen terrible bit-jobs. He had arrived on a desolate morning in the new year and struggled his way through to spring and cried when it arrived, baffled and inexplicably sad. 

This he had not experienced:

In every window, candles. Strung back and forth across every city centre street, tiny glittering lights.

His breath clouded in the air, and the cold laid itself between his coat and his skin like an undershirt. And it was – quite nearly acceptable, all the same. He had a little money, even; considered, as he walked through the city with the Bull beside him, the bright displays in the shop windows. Idle conversation. Nothing, for once, terribly pressing.

“Chocolate,” the Bull said with the voice of authority. “Cream, a little mountain of those tiny marshmallows, a bit of cinnamon.”

“I suppose if one is to live in this Maker-forsaken climate, one simply must,” Dorian said. “Whatever did they do here before the advent of mass import? Eat bark and suffer?”

“Got piss-drunk,” the Bull said. Laughed, too pleased. “Speaking of, you want to come over tonight?”

A bottle of vodka, the Bull’s terrible sagging sofa. That dizzy half-drunk desire he would inevitably find himself feeling for a man who thought tracksuit trousers were clothing. Who took such care. Who had never yet touched him in any way beyond the incidental, but who would not – who would not, surely, be averse. Who would understand.

Lights in the darkness.

“Of course I do,” Dorian said. “What do you take me for?”


	5. Dance, Dance, Dance

Up the stairs from the club into cold air, all three of them laughing, buzzing with energy. Dorian and Sera leaning on one another’s shoulders, and shit, the Bull was glad to see them giggling like kids over nothing at all. Relaxed and unsteady on their feet and feeling good. They deserved it. A long hard year.

“Wish Widdle could’ve made it,” Sera said. Hanging her weight from Dorian, arm thrown around his neck so that he staggered sideways with it. “I guess you’re alright. But I can’t grab your bits on the dancefloor, can I.”

“I don’t recommend it,” Dorian agreed, with the careful enunciation of the slightly drunk. “A disappointing prospect for all involved.”

“Your bits were pretty busy anyway, right,” Sera said. Cackled.

Ice and grit under their boots. Around the corner onto the main road, and the taillights of their bus threw red across the asphalt as it pulled away. 

“Aw, shite,” Sera muttered. Half an hour to stand and wait, snow in the air. “Pissing busses! Sod this. Let’s walk. Let’s _run_. Come on, old men, keep up.”

The Bull laughed. “What, think you can keep up with me? You’re on.”

Dorian’s hand in his like they were teenagers, like Dorian had forgotten to worry about it, and they ran and ran, laughing breathlessly all the way along the road. Out onto the great high bridge between the islands, knees aching on the incline, south to north over scattered islets, over the great frozen expanse of the inlet. Icebreakers crept along the centre of it, a thin strip of open water bobbing in their wake, ice chunks listing.

The city spread itself below them, bright snow-covered islands and dark woods.

“Fuck me,” Sera said, hands to knees at the top of the world. “It’s kinda pretty like this after all.”

“Oh,” Dorian said. His hand tightened around the Bull’s. A sidelong glance up at him. A smile. “I suppose it is.”


	6. Alliances

There was a huddle of bodies around the Bull’s kitchen table, half the Bull’s youth centre strays: Dalish and Rocky staring down at a notebook and whispering, Skinner pretending to be above it all, Krem in silent consideration of—whatever it was they were considering. Grim just silent. To a person, they jolted up guiltily when they realised someone was standing in the doorway; relaxed only when they saw it was Dorian.

“Goodness,” he said. “This is all very secretive of you. Don’t mind me.”

He went about the business of watering the plants, to which he was solemnly sworn. The winter didn’t seem to be agreeing with all of them. So little light, of course. The sun barely cleared the top of the neighbouring building now at noon. 

Behind him, an argument about the tackiest sort of seasonal ornaments had given way to an argument about the merits of different types of paper stars.

“What is all this, then?” Dorian called over his shoulder. “A burst of adopted religious sentiment?”

“The Chief just fucking loves glittery stuff,” Krem offered. “Figured we’d test his limits. See if he has any.” 

Skinner’s distinctive laughter.

“Spoken like true problem children,” Dorian said, and it was a measure of how far they’d all come that this pronouncement was met with general laughter. “If you require guidance, I will point out that one can buy pink glitter-covered owl ornaments from Eel’s, and that Bull will be back at around ten tomorrow.”

“Altus Pavus,” Krem said, with a note of true admiration, “you really are alright.”

“You heard none of this from me,” Dorian said serenely. “And I certainly didn’t see any of you. Do remember to lock the door on your way out.”

Still more laughter. A warm, indulgent feeling. Like watching Felix planning. 

What an unanticipated sort of belonging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus doodles which were originally cover images for the booklet:
> 
>    
> Front:   
> 
> 
>    
> Back:  
> 


End file.
